Things I Learned from ACCU 2010

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 04/25/2010 04:55 AM, Gareth Charnock wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>> Heh. I've surprised a lot of laymen, after telling them I'm a
>>> programmer, by my opinions that most programmers are incompetent and
>>> most software and consumer electronics are terrible. Seems hugely
>>> ironic to those unfamiliar with the field, but being around it and
>>> (at the risk of narcissism) knowing what I'm going, I think puts me
>>> (along with many of the people on this board) in a prime position to
>>> notice flaws and steps backwards.
>>
>> I share your opinion that most software and consumer electronics is
>> terrible. Of course, I've produced my share of terrible software, but
>> I won't make any excuses for doing so.
>>
>> For example, my TV set crashes every once in a while, and must be
>> power cycled :-(
>>
>> The old analog sets never did that!
> That's nothing. My laptop power supply crashes every so often and starts
> failing to report itself to my laptop. It then has to be power cycled. I
> am not making this up!

Well actually that's a different matter altogether. Power supplies are 
switching devices that, when old, fail to maintain oscillation. When you 
power cycle them they usually re-prime themselves because there's some 
simple electronics that does it. If you listen carefully to the source, 
you may hear a high-pitch sound when it's working. The louder the noise, 
the older the source.

Failure to report comes from the third wire that connects the source to 
the laptop. That wire is quite thin and is the first to break on an 
older source. The manifestation is that the laptop intermittently fails 
to figure that it is connected to a correct power source.

Time to change the power brick. Many go for under $10 on ebay, free 
shipping. (How the heck do they make money off them?)


Andrei